All right. You got me. I’m no political scientist. I’m not a law student, or some government employee.

I’m just another human being. A private citizen. As such, I have what you may call “common sense.” We all have this. We all use it. And sometimes, when you look at the world around you with your common sense spectacles on, there are lots of things that don’t seem to make sense.

That’s because a lot of the world we see every day (by that, I mean western, urban society – by the way, did I mention I live in Canada?) was not constructed and shaped with common sense alone in mind. It was also carved by greed, weathered by whimsy, and built on lies.

But what if we did use common sense to shape the society in which we are a part?

What amazing possibilities abound, in a world built on common sense?

I propose a thought experiment. Call it an exercise in imaginative reasoning. Let’s say that we could make any changes we wanted, to official policy, law & order, the media, the prison systems – ANYTHING. This is a perfect world. It lives in our minds, and nothing can ever corrupt it, if we don’t want it to.

Item #1: Accurate Representation of Diversity

So, you know how often times in life, big decisions have to be made. A big bridge needs to be built. A man committed a crime, got caught, and we need to know what to do with him. We’re running out of water. You know, problems that are kinda tricky to solve without some big-time help.

When it comes to big problems, we as humans have decided that the best thing to do is to designate an elite group of people to make those decisions for us. They make the laws, they allocate funds toward necessary services, and they evaluate environmental concerns and devise plans for survival.

This usually works out. On some levels, we elect a single person to make all the decisions. This technique has a bumpy history. Sometimes positive, sometimes not. It’s a gamble, ’cause all your eggs are shoved into one basket.

But for now, let’s focus on areas where we do elect boards, panels, trusts, all that jazz.

Now, my common sense feels that any group of people who are charged with, in part, accurately representing the people whom they serve should accurately mirror said people.

To take a very simple example, and not to beat it into the ground:

A company has 1000 employees. Of those employees, 65% are female, and 35& are male. Overseeing this company is a board of 10 CEOs. My common sense math dictates that 6 or 7 of those CEOs should be women, and 3 or 4 of them should be men.

This is an exciting idea when you start applying it elsewhere.

Imagine a number of women in the House of Parliament, in the House of Commons, or on the Supreme Court equivalent to the number of women in the country. Wouldn’t that be fair? Wouldn’t that make sense?

Now, while you still have your common sense glasses on, look around.

About 96% of justices that have ever served on the United States Supreme Court have been men, with only a meager handful of women (aka, “non-males”, or “fairer sexed”).

In 2014, Fortune Magazine noted that 4% of CEOs to companies in the Fortune 500 belonged to minorities (aka, “non-whites”, or “coloureds”). It also reported that 4.8% of individuals in the top executive posts of those Fortune 500 companies were women (aka, “penis-less boobie-men”).

Does that accurately represent the people employed by these companies? Especially the ones with factories in other countries? You’d have to take into account the demographics of those countries as well, since you as a CEO are a representative of your company and its people.

Food for thought. That’s all this is. Something to muse over while you’re riding the bus, or taking a shit.

I’m not going to stand atop a soap-box and say “everyone must agree with me, now!” I’m also not going to utter such thick-headed things like, “Why is everybody so stupid? I know exactly what they should do! Everyone’s an idiot except me!” That’s Trump-talk. Short-sighted, obtuse, emotional, biased, and flawed.

The world is a complex place, and as such there are no simple solutions. The solutions are comparable in difficulty to the severity of the problem to be solved. We as humans have spent a long time getting ourselves twisted up in a rat’s nest of complex problems. It’s going to be a while before we untangle ourselves.

But ideas help. Ideas never hurt. Especially when they are expressed in the spirit of free expression, with a light heart and a clear mind, with kind intentions, and an open heart.